Olivia Rodrigo Does Marie Antoinette Cosplay With “Drop Dead” Video

While, upon first glance, a title like “Drop Dead” might make one believe that the song is in the style of Olivia Rodrigo’s angstier Sour and Guts-era music, the person she’s referring to dropping dead isn’t “some dude,” but rather, herself. And this because a guy she’s fallen for has kissed her (or is about to) and it’s sent her over the edge. Put her in a coffin, as it were, from the levels of swooning and heart-swelling that have occurred as a result of this form of affection (so Lord knows what would happen if the two actually had sex). To mirror that feeling—the butterflies-in-the-stomach one that comes from falling “head over heels” (to use another cliché)—Dan Nigro’s production on the track is key to establishing that hopeful, jaunty tone that goes hand in hand with the emotions Rodrigo is expressing.

And yes, clearly, she wants to make this her version of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven.” Hence, referencing it early on in the song when she says of her “beloved,” “You know all the words to ‘Just Like Heaven’/And I know why he wrote them/Now that you’re standin’ right here.” The “he” in that sentence obviously being The Cure’s frontman, Robert Smith, who joined Rodrigo onstage during her headlining performance at Glastonbury in 2025 to sing not only “Friday I’m in Love,” but also, you guessed it, “Just Like Heaven.” A song that, incidentally, was recorded in France (along with the rest of 1987’s Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me), the stage where Rodrigo sets the video’s narrative. More specifically, at the Palace of Versailles, where, thus far, only Sofia Coppola has seemed to gain as much unfettered access to all the rooms as Rodrigo and her go-to director, Petra Collins.

Perhaps being well aware of the privilege and rarity of having such a setting at one’s disposal, Collins (who has also world-built for Rodrigo’s previous videos, “good 4 u,” “brutal,” “vampire” and “bad idea right?”) didn’t miss a beat on making the most of it. But not before commencing the video with a pink, “ultra-girly” title card that announces, “olivia Rodrigo drop dead” and then cuts to an ethereal, dreamy-looking shot of Rodrigo dancing in slow motion (while wearing a dress that Jane Birkin enthusiasts will surely recognize) amidst a crowd that moves far faster than she does.

A crowd that is probably at the early-closing bar Rodrigo references when she says, “I know that the bar closes at eleven/But I hope you never finish that beer.” Because that would mean the night is getting closer to ending—especially for a girl who isn’t interested in “putting out” just yet (because, as previously alluded to, trop de action with this guy might just make her spontaneously combust in lieu of dropping dead). In the next scene, Rodrigo sings the aforementioned lines while a karaoke screen looms in the background of the other room, the camera moving closer and closer to Rodrigo’s face for the kind of tight close-up that Mary Bronstein was so fond of for Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.

And with the simple shift in lighting color (from pink to purple) on her face, it’s plain to see that the tableau has changed from a bar to, well, “her” bedroom in Versailles. Where, bedecked with headphones, she stares at a computer (not unlike a famous image of Kirsten Dunst and Jason Schwartzman behind the scenes of Marie Antoinette) that starts flashing its blue-white light in a decidedly “nightclub” kind of way. This after she says, “Oh, one night I was bored [though it sounds kind of like ‘born’] in bed/And stalked you on the internet” (because what girl hasn’t done this to her crush?). The subsequent part of that chorus being, “It’s feminine intuition/‘Cause I always had a vision of us standing like this/All pressed up in the bathroom line/You lookin’ like an angel on the walls of Versailles.” Hence, the genesis of a video concept was surely born. And with Collins’ distinct style, the location becomes part of the feeling Rodrigo wants to instill within the listener/viewer. One that suggests being in disbelief that a fantasy (like Versailles) could actually become someone’s day-to-day reality.

And the “quotidianness” of it all is pronounced in details like Rodrigo lounging on a bed that’s really just a bunch of mattresses stacked on top of each other (for something like a “The Princess and the Pea” effect). This before she bursts up and says, “The most alive I’ve ever been/But kiss me and I might drop dead” before feigning to do just that by practically falling off the bed. Collins then cuts to one of the main halls of the palace (which could easily be mistaken for somewhere in The Louvre—the only location more cliché when it comes to portrayal in pop culture [see also: Bande à Part, The Da Vinci Code, The Dreamers [imitating Bande à Part] and “The Carters’” video for “Apeshit”]) where Rodrigo, still wearing her headphones, runs through it like she owns the place. And, considering she’s acting as if in a “reimagining” of Marie Antoinette’s daily life (that is, as already reimagined by Sofia Coppola), as far as this “narrative” is concerned, she does. Accordingly, a woman of such means can afford to wear what looks like lingerie, but is actually a Chloé top. That’s right: top, not dress. But, paired with the frilly, ruffle-trimmed micro shorts she’s wearing, Rodrigo turns it into something that can pass for a dress (if one is thin enough), further accentuated by her thigh-high white socks—since she’s going for a whole coquette thing during this era.  

As she continues to run joyously through the halls, she goes into the second verse, admitting, “And I feel likе I might throw up/Left hook, right punch to the gut [a nod to “get him back!” and Guts all at once]/You’re so, so prеtty, boy/I’m paranoid I made you up/Yeah, I’d love it if you walked me home/If you promised we could go real slow/‘Cause I got chewing gum/And a bunch of stuff I’d like to know/Like, have you ever been to Japan?/Or taken that Eurostar to France?” It’s the latter question that further cements the rightful theory that the song is about London-based Louis Partridge, who, although the two are no longer together, clearly left a lingering impression on Rodrigo. To the point that breaking up with him made her think about the Sex and the City episode (“Ex and the City”) where Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is confronted by her own ex, Steve (David Eigenberg), and forced to admit, “I miss you. Whenever something funny happens, I always wanna tell you about it.” Begging the Sombr question, “How can we go back to being friends/When we just shared a bed?”

But “Drop Dead” demarcates the phase in the relationship that’s still magical, that makes a girl feel positively giddy…and that’s why Rodrigo places it as track one on You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love. And yes, as for the Del Reyian length of such a title, Rodrigo confirmed that Lana was an inspiration while making the record. As such, one could even argue that Del Rey, as much as Sofia Coppola and Kirsten Dunst (as Marie), is an influence on this video—for she was the one to make a palatial music video of her own in France by way of “Born to Die” at the Château de Fontainebleau. Granted, her scenes were a lot more, let’s say, stationary than Rodrigo’s, who preens and prances about the palace as if she’s just done many, many bumps of cocaine. Such is the effect of being lovestruck.

But that’s not all Rodrigo does on the dynamism front. By the time she’s singing, “Pisces and a Gemini [another overt reference to Partridge]/But I think we might go really nice together/If you let me stay the night/Well, I think I might just have to stay forever,” she’s also jumping up and down in one of the many lavish rooms while playing a pink guitar with two backup guitarists holding the same color instrument. As for that promise to “stay forever,” well, it’s every man’s nightmare (along with a mantra like, “I will follow him wherever he may go”). And while Pisces and Geminis aren’t known for going that well together, Rodrigo patently remains ever the optimist in her then current state of being hit by Cupid’s arrow.

As for the astrology mention that pointedly spotlights Partridge, it also ties in with the Del Rey “modus,” for it was she who blatantly called out Sean Larkin on “Chemtrails Over the Country Club” with the lines, “You’re born in December and I’m born in June/My Cancer is sun and my Leo is moon.” Then, while performing it live at BST Hyde Park in 2023, she added in the flourish, “He’s born in December and he got married while we were still together/I guess that I met him, met him too soon/Sometimes I wonder what his wife would think if she knew that I didn’t know anything.” Along with, “He’s born in December and he got married while we were in couples therapy together.” Who knows if Rodrigo might not one day include the same “ad-libbed” musings in one of her own live performances of “Drop Dead.”

In any case, after the first guitar scene, Collins expands the scope of the setting by cutting to various scenes of Rodrigo flitting about in the different outdoor areas of Versailles. Wielding that simultaneous “soft focus” meets “VHS grainy” aesthetic of hers (though, in this instance, she used Betacam to achieve the “retro” look), Collins also films Rodrigo running along the side of the palace gate for an effect that recalls Greta Gerwig as Frances Halladay (in, what else, Frances Ha) running urgently but triumphantly through the streets of Lower Manhattan to the tune of David Bowie’s “Modern Love.”

By the time she’s done frolicking and prancing (as any girl would when given such unfettered access to Versailles), the final shot concludes with Rodrigo totally spent—once again falling as if to indicate her whole “drop dead” vibe after experiencing being “the most alive I’ve ever been.” Lying on the front steps to the palace as if she couldn’t possibly make it inside again without an assist from some servants, breathing heavily from all those leaps and jumps she did while running around. Collins then does a quick-moving pan-out shot to highlight the grand scope of the palace…and Rodrigo’s general tininess when set against it. A grander metaphor, perhaps, for what it means to try to fight something as big, as monumentally overpowering as one’s emotions once they’re in love.